Food estates: paving the way for future land grabs

Newly planted rice-fields in Tanah Miring, Merauke Regency in 2016. Merauke has been targetted since 2007 for a series of agricultural expansion projects.2016 © Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat

In July 2020 the Indonesian Government announced that it would be relaunching a policy of promoting industrial-scale agriculture as a means of stimulating the economy, avoiding potential food shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and meeting the challenges that climate change will pose to food security.472

The initial areas proposed for the so-called ‘food estates’ were the site of a similar but failed project from Soeharto’s time – the Mega Rice Project in Central Kalimantan – and an area in North Sumatra Province. In September 2020 it was announced that southern Papua Province was also being targeted (including areas in Merauke, Mappi and Boven Digoel regencies), as well as South Sumatra and East Nusa Tenggara provinces.473

472 Anam K (2020), Arumingtyas L, Hariandja R & Saturi S (2020) 473 Setyorini VP (2020)

The size of the proposed food estate in Papua is not yet confirmed, but it is clearly intended to be a megaproject. An initial document published on a Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) website474 referred to an area of 2,052,551 ha as being under evaluation through a Rapid Strategic Environmental Assessment (see below). However, by the time the MoEF presented a progress report on that assessment, a different and considerably larger area, covering 3,234,658 ha, was under consideration.475

This second area includes 243,622 ha of land classed as protected forest. Part of this is the 41,061 ha of mangrove swamps which line the coast of Mappi and Merauke, where coastal erosion is already a serious problem and liable to be exacerbated by any deforestation. In all, the area under consideration includes some 1.36 million ha of forested land, of which 625,557 ha are primary forest, although in this region of diverse habitats grasslands and savannahs are no less ecologically important. Some 51% of the area (1.66 million ha) is year-round or seasonal wetland,476 including 175,122 ha of peatland.477

Map of areas of Interest of Food Estate - land cover and peat

474 Director General of Forestry Planning and Environmental Management (2020) 475 Direktorat PDLKWS (2020) 476 Land classed as swamp forest, swamp bushes, swamp or mangrove on the 2019 MoEF land cover map. 477 Using the Ministry of Agriculture’s 2011 peat dataset.

1.36 million ha

of forested land

625,557 ha

are primary forest, although in this region of diverse habitats grasslands and savannahs are no less ecologically important

243,622 ha 41,061 ha

of land classed as protected forest of mangrove swamps which line the coast of Mappi and Merauke

1.66 million ha

is year-round or seasonal wetland

175,122 ha

of peatland

This is the latest in a string of similar megaprojects proposed for southern Papua since 2007, all of which have failed to achieve anything approaching their projected extent. In 2007 the Saudi Bin Laden family was reportedly intending to be a major investor in a plan called the Merauke Integrated Rice Estate.478 In 2010, as commodity prices rose in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Indonesia declared that its food security was at risk and proposed a 1.28 million ha industrial agriculture project, the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE), which catalysed a major palm oil expansion but did not significantly raise production of other food crops.479 In 2015 President Jokowi joined a rice harvest in Merauke organised by the Medco Group, one of the initial MIFEE investors, and declared that one million hectares would be converted to rice fields within three years.480 Rice-field expansion has continued, but on a much smaller scale.481

The latest food estate programme marks the first time that a project of this kind has been extended beyond Merauke Regency to include Boven Digoel and Mappi.

Conversion of natural ecosystems on the scale proposed would have a devastating ecological impact. When one overlays the proposal and maps of existing plantation concessions and industrial forestry permits, it appears that almost the whole of southern Papua is destined for some kind of industrial development. The vast scale of the project means that it would span and severely reduce three unique ecoregions, as defined according to WWF’s global classification: the TransFly Savanna and Grasslands,482 the Southern New Guinea Freshwater Swamp Forests483 and the Southern New Guinea Lowland Rainforests.484 President Jokowi has been quoted as urging rapid construction of access roads for the proposed food estates, in order that ‘large modern agricultural machinery does not have difficulty reaching the fields’.485 However, road networks of this kind could also improve access for heavy machinery used by illegal loggers.

478 C'roko Inter-Science/Theory (2010) 479 Awas MIFEE (2013c) 480 Kompas.com (2015) 481 Jubi.co.id (2019) 482 WWF website ‘Southeastern Asia: Southern portion of the island’ 483 WWF website ‘Southeastern Asia: Southern New Guinea’ 484 WWF website ‘Southern New Guinea lowland rain forests’ 485 Arumingtyas L, Hariandja R & Saturi S (2020)

Termite mound in eucalyptus forests in Wasur National Park, Merauke Regency. Merauke and Mappi regencies where the bulk of the Papuan food estate plans are located contain a wide range of unique habitats in addition to the tropical rainforests which dominate the rest of the West Papuan lowlands.15 Aug 2017

The 2010 and 2015 Merauke food estate plans could be fairly described as poorly conceived ideas, since as far as we are aware public government announcements took place before any detailed study and the government subsequently appeared to fail to devote meaningful resources to assessing their feasibility.486 As a result reports of multiple obstacles arose, including opposition from Indigenous people who assert they had not been consulted,487 conflicting permits issued by the bupati over the same land,488 crop failure489 and poor irrigation infrastructure.490 Few private companies were interested in taking the risk of investing in the projects.491

There are indications that the 2020 iteration of the southern Papua food estate proposal will follow a similar trajectory. Under cover of the doubtful claim that the pandemic response necessitates rapid action, the government’s plan is to undertake a ‘Rapid Strategic Environmental Assessment’492 before releasing or rezoning forest estate land.

486 Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat (2011) 487 Awas MIFEE (2013a) 488 Awas MIFEE (2013c) 489 Yazid M (2012) 490 TribunNews (2016) 491 Sulistyawati R (2020) 492 Arumingtyas L, Hariandja R & Saturi S (2020)

Ordinarily, Strategic Environmental Assessments are intended to feed into the spatial planning process, and were defined in a 2016 regulation493 as ‘a series of systematic, thorough and participative analyses to ensure that sustainable development principles underlie and are integrated in regional development’. However, the government did not clarify what it meant in referring to ‘rapid’ assessments, a term with no legal basis which it has also used with reference to the planning of the new capital city in Kalimantan.494 This has led to fears being expressed that a new and less rigorous mechanism will be employed that has been chosen in order to give the green light to a socially and environmentally destructive national project.495

Following this criticism, a December 2020 MoEF briefing on the progress of the southern Papua assessment did state that it would follow the procedure set out in the 2016 regulation.496 Nevertheless, from that briefing it was clear that all the work done so far had been carried out solely by the MoEF in Jakarta, without any involvement of local or provincial government, and with no coordination with the ongoing spatial planning process. Not only is this initial top-down approach jeopardising local autonomy and Papua’s Special Autonomy, it also raises doubt that Indigenous communities will ever be adequately integrated in the decisionmaking process or their needs and desires properly taken into account.

Alongside this potentially problematic assessment process, in recent months the government has also increased its range of legislative instruments to force through large-scale land conversion for food estates. The first important change is contained in the Omnibus Law, which modifies the 2012 Law on Acquisition of Land for Development in the Public Interest. That law, which was strongly opposed by civil society at the time,497 allowed the government to acquire land compulsorily for purposes such as new infrastructure and defence.498 In the Omnibus Law, the list of uses for which the government can acquire land compulsorily has been expanded to include purposes such as tourism development and food security programmes. This means that the central government now has a legal mechanism to appropriate land for these purposes, even if the Indigenous landowners do not consent to relinquishing their land for the project in question.

On the same day as the Omnibus Bill became law, a new ministerial regulation consolidated the threat,499 laying out the mechanism by which land in the forest estate can henceforth be used for new food estates. As was already the case, land zoned as Convertible Production Forest (Hutan Produksi Konversi – HPK) may be released by means of a similar mechanism to that currently used for plantation permits. However, under a new, separate mechanism other types of forest, including protected forest areas (Hutan Lindung), can also be used for food estates. If used for this purpose, such areas would be reclassified as ‘Forest Estate for Food Security’ (Kawasan Hutan untuk Ketahanan Pangan – KHKP) and would remain part of the forest estate, even if they were no longer forested.

493 Government Regulation 46/2016 (President of the Republic of Indonesia (2016a)) 494 Ministry of Environment and Forestry (2019) 495 WALHI (2020) 496 Direktorat PDLKWS (2020) 497 Tempo.co (2011) 498 The list of purposes is given in Article 10 of Law 2/2012 on Acquisition of Land for Development in the Public Interest / Undang-Undang no. 2 tahun 2012 tentang Pengadaan Tanah Bagi Pembangunan Untuk Kepentingan Umum (full text available at https://peraturan.bpk.go.id/Home/ Details/39012). 499 Ministerial Regulation 24/2020 (Minister for Environment and Forestry (2020b))

Map of area of interest of food estate - kawasan hutan

The creation of a new forest category in this way is in clear conflict with the 1999 Forestry Law,500 which as a law has precedence over a ministerial regulation. Article 38 of the 1999 Law states that production forest and protected forest can only be used for development purposes if doing so does not alter the basic function of the area (i.e. to remain forested and provide environmental services).

The Forest Moratorium offers primary forest and peatland no protection from development of this kind, because use of land for ‘national food sovereignty programmes’ including crops such as rice, sugar cane, corn, soy, sago and cassava is given a specific exemption in the 2019 version of the moratorium. Further regulatory support for development was granted on 20 November 2020 when the food estate programme was added to the list of National Strategic Projects,501 which are also exempt from the Forest Moratorium.

500 Fitra S (2020), ICEL (2020a) 501 Through Presidential Regulation 109/2020 (President of the Republic of Indonesia (2020)).

The power that the national government has given itself to allocate land for food estates raises important questions about the potential role being carved out for businesses owned or run by members of Indonesia’s oligarchy. An immediate concern relates to the Minister for Defence, Prabowo Subianto. In July 2020 President Jokowi appointed his former rival for the presidency to a key role in developing the food estate programme, reportedly stating that rapid action was required to implement the policy and justifying his choice of Subianto on the surprising grounds that food resilience fell under the domain of national defence.502 Meanwhile, Prabowo’s Ministry of Defence has set up a company which aims ‘to play a strategic role in supporting food, energy, and water security’.503 PT Agro Industri Nasional (Agrinas) is owned by foundations set up by the ministry, and its board of directors includes a number of Prabowo’s associates: former generals, members of his Gerindra party and veterans of his campaign team.504 Greenpeace is not aware that PT Agrinas has been offered any formal role in managing the southern Papua food estate. However, the company has an office in Merauke, and according to its website has access to 40,000 ha of land in Merauke and another 20,000 ha in Jayapura, in the north of Papua Province.505

The recent regulatory changes designed to facilitate food estates stand to benefit PT Agrinas. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence’s establishment of the company raises concerns that the executive government may be taking unaccountable control of the new enterprise, avoiding the traditional oversight by the House of Representatives.506 There is a risk that politicians may try to enrich themselves or their parties through such arrangements. Aside from farming plans, PT Agrinas has reportedly obtained a licence for the lucrative business of exporting lobster larvae, making it one of several companies linked to Gerindra that obtained licences507 from Minister for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Edhy Prabowo (unrelated to Prabowo Subianto, but also a member of Gerindra508) after he reversed an export ban. On 25 November 2020, Edhy Prabowo was arrested by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in relation to these licences509 and subsequently removed from his post. His replacement as minister was Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, who was promoted from his previous post as deputy at the Ministry of Defence, during which time he had also been a director of PT Agrinas.510

502 Fachriansyah R (2020) 503 PT Agrinas website ‘About’ 504 Law-Justice.co (2020) 505 PT Agrinas website ‘About’ 506 Kim K (2018) 507 Akbar C (2020) 508 Partai Gerindra (2013) 509 Gokkon B (2020) 510 Idris M (2020)

The Ministry of Defence has also announced that it intends to set up a new Body for Strategic Logistic Supplies (Badan Cadangan Logistik Strategis), under which the military would get involved in food production on the grounds of ensuring food security.511 Although this body appears not yet to have been established in law, members of the military have already been promoting it and announcing their intention to look for land and establish new food-based businesses in southern Papua.512 There are indications that this initiative is being pursued independently by the Ministry of Defence, and not fully integrated with the Strategic Environmental Assessment being developed by the MoEF.513

As far as Greenpeace is aware, the Indonesian Government has not set out a detailed rationale for why an increase in industrial food production is a necessary and appropriate response to the COVID-19 pandemic – especially as food agriculture is reportedly the only sector which has continued to grow despite the pandemic.514 In Merauke, rice farmers are reportedly producing a surplus, and are facing problems in finding a market for all the rice they produce.515 On the contrary, academics have warned against repeating past food estate failures and instead recommended that Indonesia’s COVID-19 food security response should focus on investment in supply chain reform in the short term and support for more diversified food production in the long term.516

The palm oil industry offers a very worrying precedent which suggests that the impact of such an expansion of industrial agriculture on local food security could be devastating. The arrival of oil palm plantations in the area has already resulted in forests being lost, rivers polluted517 and Indigenous Papuans becoming increasingly dependent on bought goods to meet their nutritional needs,518 and similar impacts can be expected from food estate development.

Since the plantation sector arrived in Merauke and other parts of Papua in the last decade, there have been multiple reports of child malnutrition in areas around plantations;519 for example, data from Muting health clinic, in the heart of Merauke’s plantation zone, provides evidence of stunting in children, suggesting widespread malnutrition among both young children and their mothers.520 There is a great risk that any food security programme that is in conflict with the needs and desires of the Indigenous inhabitants of the land where it is situated will actually create food insecurity rather than alleviate it.

It is also ironic that another of President Jokowi’s stated goals for the programme is to contribute to climate change resilience,521 given that the proposed food estates in Papua, Kalimantan and Sumatra call for development of forest and peatland areas with the inevitable carbon emissions that this will entail.

511 Republika (2020) 512 Media Transparency (2020) 513 Direktorat PDLKWS (2020) 514 Uly YA (2020) 515 Bams (2020) 516 McCarthy JF et al (2020) 517 Abubar M (2012) 518 Chao S (2020) 519 Forest Peoples Programme, Pusaka & Sawit Watch (2013), Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakyat (2014a) 520 The Gecko Project (2020) 521 Arumingtyas L, Hariandja R & Saturi S (2020)